


jerusalem ghosts

by serayume



Category: Haikyuu!!, 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime), 鬼滅の刃 | Kimetsu no Yaiba (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Demon!Kuroo, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Metaphors, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Rating May Change, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Starts pre-canon, Unhealthy Relationships, demon slayer!oikawa, hq characters in kny verse, im feeding myself, immortal!oikawa, kind of, lots of canon deviation, my crumbs, no beta we die like men, or was, other characters to appear, this rly is SO self indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serayume/pseuds/serayume
Summary: Oikawa Tooru dies on a winter night and wakes.No winter has ever claimed him since.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 18
Kudos: 26





	jerusalem ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello !!! so here's something i've been working on. i was like. so, haikyuu. kny. nice. let's mash them together and make oikawa miserable. ergo, this fic. this work will also delve into real time history and try to line things up here together with the world's national government's involvement with all the slaying thing. i mean, hopefully, in later chapters. other characters are also set to appear. anyway here you go, i hope u enjoy this !!

**_JAPAN, TIME: [UNKNOWN]_**  
Sendai, Miyagi

Oikawa breathes in, and trembles bone-deep—sucks in a sharp hiss as his skeleton slowly becomes a shallow grave to be filled with corpses of flowers stretching on his marrow, rotten like he is, spoiled to the brink of death. A kingdom of his own flesh resting on his skin. An empire crowned with the stench of glory and gore.

His body is no longer warm, no longer has the feel of a person _alive_ , not someone who breathes; he’s gone _coldcoldcold_ like the snow gathered on his windowsill, innocent in the bathed light. Red solidified on the cracks of his teeth, as they’ve long stopped flowing and dancing to the rhythm of his heart behind his ribcage now made of mold. It has long stopped beating since a blade tore it open and left it to burn and dry and _shrivel_ in the mercy of the wind.

(Ah, _laughable_ —as if the wind carried compassion in its heels, as if it breathed like men, as if it was a being capable of something so generous. Mercy does not get carried in the wind; only the prayers out the mouths of warriors like gospel induced poison, fresh out of delivering bloodied bodies for it to devour—mercy favors the brave. Mercy favors those who take their swords and pledge to die with the blade beside their grave or you will not see them fall at all. Mercy will not answer his call when he has not answered the calling of his own sword.)

He was a warrior, fallen and decrepit—rotten and paired with a soul of old. He was a warrior, once, a reject of talent and a product of hard work. He was a warrior, once, who used the sharp edges of his sword to cut down demons and see to their ashes like a faithful servant of the burning sun. He was a warrior once. Now he was only the man who sullied his sword by using it to slice himself open, a sin so heavy it follows you to the grave.

He is already dead—yet the wind has not bid him a sliver of farewell. It’s almost mistaken as a mercy, the way the choir tones sound, but all it was was a punishment for what he has betrayed, for the sanctity he has broken.

(You are never to turn your sword against yourself, lest you will never find a moment of peace.)

One— _two_ —three— _four_ —five.

A gasping breath shocks the silence still.

—and so the inevitable comes.

(He _breathes_.)

There he lies, the hole on his heart closed, waiting for the war to call him back.

* * *

Oikawa Tooru dies on a winter night and wakes.

No winter has ever claimed him since.

* * *

**_JAPAN, 1904._**  
Kanazawa, Ishikawa-ken Prefecture

The town of Kanazawa has always been a picture perfect reflection of still waters, Oikawa thinks, as he gazes at the men packing their belongings at the outer walls of the capital, their families at arm’s length. The houses stand without a grieving or a sorrow etched into the walls, only distant farewells and hands being held to be kept as a memory, a warm touch to remember while they’ve passed their homes’ sliding doors.

It baffles him how easily these people accept the concept of being left behind, enough to forget why they were leaving in the first place.

A chuckle comes up beside him, and when he turns, there’s an old woman putting down her stall, staring at him and the men afar. “They’re off to war, young man,” she elaborates. And _ah_ —Oikawa knew this already, but it seems like he forgot. Small things were getting easier and easier to forget these days.

“War, obaa-san?” he questioned, even though he already knew the answer. To hear other people’s view of it, of course, was another thing.

The old woman sighed. “War,” she confirmed. “But perhaps I shouldn’t call it as such yet, then, as they’re only getting sent off for training,” In that moment, she develops a look of resignation that Oikawa was far too familiar with. This person called him young man, after all, even when he was older than her in his mortal skin. “But what do all those lead to? War, still.”

 _War, still_ , agreed Oikawa privately in his thoughts. “Against Russia, was it?” These kinds of facts that passed from people’s mouths were strange, to him, someone who lived in another kind of world—someone who’s seen what’s beyond the artilleries, someone who’s seen more important things than a petty struggle of power. Someone who’s lived with the constantly evolving definition of war.

“Mm,” she gives a nod. “They say we’re attacking soon, somewhere at Port Arthur. Word travels fast, you see, and they say these men who are getting shipped out will be part of the Navy in a day. Slaughter, I say. _Lambs_ ,” A scoff follows the almost spit-out word, a low hiss.

Oikawa just smiled. “How long would you think this’ll last, then, obaa-san?”

“I’d give it a year until the people of power figure out what they want,” she answered. “I’ve lived my fair share of this, and they only ever end that way.”

“I see,” was the only response Oikawa gave. Only a year left of struggle for these men, he laughs bitterly in his head. Only a year left of bloodshed and away from their homes. Only a year left of them running away from the constant call of death by their footsteps. How unfair these men are, compared to him, someone who’s still paying for the mistake he made centuries ago.

Foolish, these men are, but they’re men who had the wind pay them its favor. (And it’s a bitter pill for Oikawa to swallow, a cold, hard truth—that the wind has found something _better_ in these nameless, faceless men than in him.)

He fingers the sheath of his sword clad in his robes, phantom touches on the handle of the blade. It’s Oikawa’s constant apology, his way of bowing down to the sword for penitence, and a prayer at the same time; a mantra of _please, please, please let me go haven’t I already paid enough_ and even shouts it at the void in moments of weakness until his voice dries up in his throat, hoarse yells spilling from the corners of his lips until they melt down to nothing—but it, nor the wind, nor mother mercy, listens.

“You’re a samurai, boy?” Oikawa registers the voice as the same old woman as before. Who, while he was lost in his musings, simply stared at him as he touched his blade out of habit.

A laugh almost escapes his mouth, hearing the word ‘samurai’ associated with him. _Preposterous_ , really—he was who he was now because he rejected the very core of being a warrior, of being any kind of samurai the world expected him to be. He was nothing but a wayward swordsman, if anything, if he could still be counted as such.

(Even when he has sullied the way of the sword.)

“I suppose you could say that,” he decides on saying, finally, when he realized he’s been taking his time answering.

“Friend of Urokodaki’s?”

Ah. Sakonji Urokodaki. Wasn’t he a previous Hashira? Oikawa pinches his lips into a tentative smile, unless it would break out with a hysterical laugh. _Oh, how loyal._

“Afraid not,” he turns his smile at her. “I’ve heard of him, however.”

The old woman huffs. “You ought to. Strange man, that one. Always keeps himself isolated with that house of his downhill.”

“Maybe he’s tired of civilization entirely,” Oikawa jokes, though he knew that it was true, in a way, in some sense. The man was once a Hashira, after all—he’s bound to be different from the rest. He’s bound to always be restless, unable to talk to people who knew absolutely _nothing_ of the world they were living in, to people who talk and walk without a fear of tendrils in the dark, without the knowledge of teeth and hands and claws able to turn you inside out, display your guts in the evening moon, full and ever-watching.

“With his weird mask and odd sense of smell and nonsense ramblings? No, _we’re_ tired of _him_ ,” she said, with an incredulity in her tone at the insinuation that Urokodaki would have any right to be tired of them instead. And with that, Oikawa laughs. It’s ironic and accurate, at the same time, what that statement means underneath.

Of course. _Of course_ a Hashira like him would not fit into the society that easily, yet still leave a mark on them. Abominations, these demon slayers were (bar the fact that he was one, once, still—he knows not, at this point, but he figures demon slayer or not, he still was an abomination, and that’s an unchanging permanence and a gross reality etched into his bones, one way or another).

He smiles at the old woman, one he never asked the name of, not that he’ll remember it in the passing years to come, not that it’ll matter, and asks for directions for the nearest inn.

“Right there,” she points to the wooden establishment just straight ahead, with a small arc bridge connecting it to the main capital. It’s large and full of decorations, a garden upfront and a river to go with it. “For the rich, that one.”

Oikawa knows the old woman’s going to recommend him a cheaper inn, but he stops her with an outstretched palm. “It’s alright, I’ve got money on me,” he says, not one to really be modest; for all the decades he’s lived, he’s saved up a fortune, taking odd jobs then and now.

The old woman just clicks her tongue. “A young man like you? A samurai doesn’t exactly pay,” _Oh, she has no idea_ , Oikawa just thought amusedly.

“Trust me, obaa-san, I’m off well on my own.”

“If you say so,” she dismisses. “What’s your name, boy?”

He doesn’t still, or hesitates, not even momentarily, when he says: “Aoba.”

The old woman looks him over, and creases her brows. “Doesn’t suit you at all, does it. Your parents must have had bad sense.”

Oikawa laughs again, this time shallow and calculated. “Ah, but I do think it matches my handsome face, though,” he said, and tilts his head for good measure. “I’ll be off now, then, obaa-san. Thank you for the directions.”

“Youth these days have no modesty in their bones,” the old woman mutters, before waving him away. “Go, then, boy.”

He nods, a quick motion, and he sets off to the inn. It was almost dusk, after all.

* * *

This town can be located at the river’s mouth of the East Sea, and that shows its meaning in full, grandiose beauty while Oikawa was walking through the town to cross the inn. He’s said before that Kanazawa was a picture perfect reflection of still waters, and that wasn’t a lie, nor just something to define the people of the capital; it was meant to embody the town as a whole, with its castles and gardens adorned with the touch of porcelain and fine lacquer.

It’s beautiful.

(Oikawa wonders if it’ll retain its beauty, once he comes back to this town decades later.)

With those thoughts, he crosses the bridge and welcomes himself into the inn, that still feels homely in the company of expensive furniture and high ceilings. He pays, in one swift motion and a risqué smile carelessly thrown towards the employee at the front, who took his money in a flustered manner.

Oikawa settles down on his bed, takes off his haori and places it beside him. He laid down, arms spread wide, his hands falling to the sheets thoughtlessly. He heaves out a sigh and tilts his head further upward until his eyes meet the ceiling, polished perfectly.

The clock ticks.

He waits.

The windows to his room fly open with the wind, and from there, a man enters, his kimono a sight for the eyes, red and vivid; something Oikawa didn’t like, and has voiced out many, many times, though the man in question never relents and keeps the headache-inducing color.

“How barbaric,” Oikawa comments. “Late and noisy. You truly have no class.”

The person crowed. “ _Late_! I was perfectly in time, Tooru-chan,” he purrs, and drops down on the bed beside Oikawa.

“Call me Tooru-chan again and you’re saying goodbye to your dick, Tetsu-chan,” Oikawa says in response with a sickeningly sweet smile, honey dripping in his voice.

“How mean,” Kuroo replied with a grin. “And you’ve said that to me how many times now?”

“More times than necessary, really.”

“Oh it’s _necessary_ , I tell you.”

Oikawa just rolled his eyes. “Stop invading my personal space already, Tetsu-chan, and get on with what you’re here for.”

“When you say it like that, it’s like you’re just keeping me for my services,” Kuroo said, a hand clutching his chest. “You wound me, really.”

“ _Services_ ,” Oikawa repeats. “Stop making it sound so dirty.”

“Well, when you ask me repeatedly to kill you, it _is_ kind of disgusting,” the other comments swiftly. “But only because it’s you, Tooru-chan, I’ll go with how upsettingly immoral this is.”

Oikawa gives him that sickeningly sweet smile again. “You’re a literal demon, Tetsu-chan, you’re as disgusting as they come.”

Kuroo barks out a laugh. “Cruel, you are,” he smiles, razor sharp-edged. “but you’re the one in need of this demon.”

“Well, you’re not proving yourself to be very useful, are you,” Oikawa says with a raised brow.

“I guess not, Aoba,” Kuroo answered with a hum. Before Oikawa could respond, he continues. “I heard that’s what you’re calling yourself now,” he pauses, pretends to think. “Is that why you don’t want me calling you Tooru-chan?”

Oikawa takes a moment before he could speak. “Oikawa Tooru is dead in the eyes of the people,” he murmurs into the space between them. “He’s not supposed to exist in this time. Aoba will take his place instead.”

“And when this… Aoba gets old? When he dies, as well, in the eyes of the people? Would you rebrand yourself again this time? Ceaselessly, endlessly?”

He just smiles at Kuroo then. “If need be, I would. It’s the only way I can celebrate death; with my names. They, for me, are my own lifetime.”

Kuroo just stayed silent and stared at him for a full minute.

“Are you done with your questions now, Tetsu-chan?”

The man in question just huffed, and nodded. He stood up, his haori billowing before him, and the moon creeps up behind them, framed by the windows of the inn. He smiles, grim, almost kindly. “Close your mouth.”

Oikawa does.

Kuroo extends his hand, sharp and peremptory, and digs his nails deep into Oikawa’s skin, tears the flesh of the skin on his chest, fingers caving in and hollowing a hole in his body—his hand going past the bones—caked in blood. When he pulls out, there’s a squelch, revolting and repulsive. When he pulls out, there’s a heart on his palm, beating still.

Oikawa sits there, on his bed, letting out nothing but a gasp resounding on the four corners of the room, and a tacit a cry of pain shot through the walls like glass. Blood pours on the ends of his mouth, cascading like the flow of the rivers of Kanazawa, sitting momentarily on his collarbones as it moves down, spilling like a waterfall, staining his clothes in a sea of red, seeping into the cloth like home.

Oikawa falls to the sheets, bloody and limp. Heartless with a hole on his chest.

Kuroo just watches, Oikawa’s heart in his hand. He turns on his heel and flees. He doesn’t want to be there when Oikawa wakes up once again; he _doesn’t_ want to be there when Oikawa realizes that the wind and mother mercy has not let him go, not today, not _ever_ —he doesn’t want to be there when Oikawa falls apart _again_ , piece by piece. (He would not know how to pick him up and glue his ruins.)

Kuroo goes.

( _“When you kill me by taking my heart out, Tetsu-chan, please leave it in the daylight.”_ )

He places Oikawa’s heart on a stone beside a river. 

( _“Why? It’s not like you’re a demon. You can walk in daylight. Your heart won’t burn.”_ )

He leaves it there for daylight to take care of.

( _“Oh, it will.”_ )

Oikawa’s heart burns and disintegrates under the harsh glare of the sun twelve hours later.

* * *

**_JAPAN, 1909._**  
Sendai, Miyagi

Sendai, as usual, was full of trees. They branch out from the entrance of the city and disappear into the woods at the back where the mountains begin to form.

It was not always like this, of course. Oikawa remembers the time when Sendai was nothing but trees; those that don’t weave their way beside the houses and shy away from the road. Back then, people built their homes in the refuge of the trees, not quite up high, but beside them. The roots were never moved from their place, as it was still a time when people bowed before the trunks and left offerings on the feet of the extending roots on the ground. Sometimes, as a sport, some place prayers on the leaves, and wish, before the time fall rolls around, that they would have already been heard by the wind.

 _And that_ , Oikawa notes as he gazes at the place before him, something about the city still familiar but strange all the same, _was a long time ago._

He’s been to Sendai at least twice by the last year, visiting it from time-to-time, giving himself ground—a reminder, maybe, to tell him where he’s from. That he came from somewhere and hailed from a place. That he didn’t just come to this world clad with a sword, dried blood on his robes, unable to get out of it ever since.

As Oikawa continues his walk on the streets of Sendai, his eyes fall to a place far north, a spot that’s still full of trees, as the path escapes to the woods. And it’s odd, really, to see a makeshift house built on the mouth of the forest.

He often curses his memory, with how it still remembers that that was where he used to cut up trees in lieu of practice, picking out branches and hurling them in the sky just to mince them before they fall. And he’s always been scolded for that. Once, he recalls, he was caught by his sister with a blade on his hand and sliced wood on the ground. She told him off and pinched his ear, but she never did say anything to their parents. (It’s difficult to tell if this was a memory, or a dream.)

It’s difficult in a sense that his memories were slipping away from his fingers like sand on an hourglass, and he doesn’t know if they’re real, or if they’re just thought up by his mind on too long nights. Most of the people, though, that star in his memories (or dreams—) are faceless. It’s almost like they don a white mask that caves in on their skin, woven into them like threads on fabric. Time has probably taken their features away from his grasp, the way his memories now slip from his fingers.

He was prepared to cast the place he thinks he spent most of his childhood one last glance before he walks away, but then two children approximately the age of ten, bordering on eleven, Oikawa’s not quite sure—are yelling at the distance. They seem to have gathered wood from the forest, he noted, by the logs on their back tied with a rope. He squints his eyes to catch a look, but he doesn’t need to strain his ears to hear what they were talking about, for the wind carries their conversation over.

“Don’t say it like that!” one of them shouts. “That’s too harsh!!”

 _What could ten-maybe-eleven-year-olds have as a problem nowadays_ , Oikawa wonders amusedly. Because, _really_.

“I’m only telling you the truth,” came the reply of the other boy. It passed by his lips almost grittily, even if his voice was calm and smooth. “You’re making too much noise, so shut up. You’ll call a boar here.”

He wasn’t wrong. Even though they were almost at the mouth of the forest, just a few steps in, that excessive shouting would call the attention of wild animals for sure—and, now, Oikawa ponders on why exactly these children are out here on their own, collecting logs that they cut up themselves from the looks of it, along with the knowledge of hunting, it seems.

As these thoughts were passing by his head, the two of them move closer, and now that Oikawa has gotten a good look, he notices that _oh, they’re twins_.

Both have hair that passes their shoulders, black and inky. They seemed to have stopped talking, as the one in white has his head hung down, and the one in black has a knit to their brows—though subtle.

He wonders what they were arguing about.

Oikawa moves away from where was leaning on a tree, fingers his hilt with a phantom touch, and thinks with a smile as he watches the two enter their house, _why not._

Oikawa knocked on the wooden door where the twins disappeared to twice and waits for the answer.

It doesn’t come.

He knocks again, this time a little more pronounced as his knuckles tapped the wood, but no one comes to answer the door even after minutes. Oikawa wills himself to patience and reminds himself that he’s dealing with children. Children that don’t bother to open doors now, really, but _still_. Children.

Before he could knock again, the door opens and reveals the twin dressed in white. Oikawa looks down.

“I told you _not_ to open it!” came a voice from inside.

The child who opened the door for him whirls around and shouts back. “What if it was important, then!”

The replying voice clicked their tongue. “We’re eleven, Muichirou! No one needs anything important from us!”

 _Ah, eleven then, not ten,_ Oikawa mentally noted. And finally—a name.

“You never know! They could be in need of logs! We’re woodcutters!”

“ _Logs_ ,” the boy drawled. “and they’re going to ask us children in the forest, of course, not just buy one from where we sell them,” the twin in black now steps into Oikawa’s point of view. He locks his gaze with a sneer. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but don’t come back again.” and then he promptly shuts the door in Oikawa’s face.

 _Well_ , Oikawa thinks as he processed just what happened, _that was something._ He didn’t even get a word in.

No matter. He’s lived for centuries and has been through worse than an eleven-year-old shutting a door in his face. What’s a few grumpy words from a child who barely even reaches his middle, really. And so, with a thick face, Oikawa knocks again. No one answers, predictably. He knocks again.

A violent opening of the door greeted him, and the twin in black, the unnamed one, faces him with a pissed off expression. “What do you _want_.”

That stops Oikawa in his tracks—he doesn’t even know what he wants to say to them, now that he thinks about it. He plants a smile on his face nonetheless, and made something up. “Logs.”

The boy in white, Muichirou, he remembers, lightens up at his answer, and crowed at his twin. “See!”

His twin just glared at him and motioned for him to shut up. He turned his glare on Oikawa this time, and said with the most disbelieving tone he could muster, “Logs. From us.”

“Yes,” Oikawa answered with a too-bright smile.

“Why,” the boy in black questioned—and Oikawa really needed to learn his name—his fingers twitching on the door, as if he were one step from slamming it again.

“Because I like asking it from children in the forest, of course,” Oikawa said, just because he can. And maybe he liked pissing people off. Children, included.

The door shuts in his face again.

Admittedly, he deserved that. Oikawa knocks again.

The door quickly opened this time, and the child who slammed the door in his face was carrying a pail of water—Oikawa connects the dots, and his reflexes save him as he swerves to the side. The ground where he was just standing on seconds ago was now pelted. Silence lingers for seconds as they just both stare at the soil.

It’s broken by a cry from Muichirou. “Nii-san! That was rude!”

The older of the twins was still staring at the wet soil with a curl of his mouth. “Pity.”

Oikawa just blinked. The words that go past his mouth were: “I just want to talk?”

He’s not even fully sure.

The grumpier, admittedly less-cute twin just pinned him with a stare (maybe a glower). “Talk,” he drawled. Oikawa noted that he liked doing that. Drawling. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

And, partially, he was right. There really was nothing to talk about. Oikawa’s just stubborn. And annoying. And bored, maybe. Curious, sure. Can he pass off as concerned?

“I’m concerned,” his smart mouth said before he could think about it. Concerned. Yes, that’s what he was.

“And what about,” Now not just admittedly but factually less-cute twin gritted out.

“Your—” Oikawa scrambles for words. “—lifestyle.”

The door twitches with a squeak. Oikawa elaborates. “I noticed you didn’t have parents, and you live in the middle of the forest by yourselves. I think that raises concern,” and it wasn’t exactly a shot in the dark—he’s scanned the small house by what the creak on the door tells him, and they’re living a pretty simple, poor, if granted, home life given the lack of furnishings and the absence of adults in the house to supply the logs. Plus, the phrase _“they’re going to ask us children in the forest”_ before did imply that they lived here on their own.

“We don’t need your concern.”

Before the door shuts in his face again, he catches a glimpse of the boy’s eyes—there’s a glass-like quality to them, and to any other child, that would have been a give away for their fragility. On this boy, though, it just seemed like polished steel.

He stares at the wooden door, and turns on his heel.

He’ll come back one day.

* * *

**_JAPAN, 1904._**  
Kanazawa Inn

Oikawa wakes alone.

It’s night, and his chest now hosts a new heart sealed in his flesh, one he felt molded by his tissues. The windows were still open, and he curses Kuroo for leaving them as such. (He focuses, instead, on those windows left open rather than his chest shut closed. He focuses on how Kuroo has no decency whatsoever, instead of the fact that he woke up again, breathing, solid, _alive_.)

The wind is a cheat. Mother mercy is the wind’s myth. He curses them both too, as he rolls over his side and curls in on himself. He curses the wind and mother mercy and the windows left open and he does it again and again and _again_. He doesn’t tire of flinging his anguish to nothing but his sheets covered in dried blood and his unfolded haori. He doesn’t tire of it even as his legs cramp with the way they’re curled pressed to his thighs.

He falls asleep, then, with curses on the corners of his lips.

When he comes to, it’s daylight.

The windows are still open, so the sun arrests his eyesight the moment he wakes.

Glimpses of last night comes back to him in clips: the windows flying open, a red kimono billowing, a hand in and out of his chest, his breath thinning out, dying, _fading_ , then _waking, still_ —

A bitter laugh lodges itself in his throat.

He’s still not dead, yet he feels so hollowed out, so shallow, like he’s got nothing else left to give. (The hole in his chest is closed yet it feels like it’s still void of a heart. It feels like a chasm stuck to Oikawa’s skin.)

Oikawa wakes. The wind and mother mercy are still deaf to his calls.

He breathes out and stretches his limbs. He still has no purpose.

Nothing new.

* * *

**_JAPAN, 1909._**  
Sendai, Miyagi

Spring rolls around and Oikawa finds himself setting foot on the soil of Sendai, still being greeted with its rows of trees. He travels his gaze to the forest up ahead, and his feet takes him north.

He stops at the sight of a familiar house in the middle of the forest, fresh cut logs littered around. He senses the presence of the twins, Muichirou—and one still unnamed, behind the door as he closes in. Oikawa raised his fist, pressed his knuckle to the door, and knocked.

The door practically flies open.

The older of the two seems quietly livid, like a calm storm, and his eyes only lighten their glower at the sight of Oikawa. His gaze turns positively fiery when his eyes dropped to Oikawa’s sword. “Are you a colleague of that woman? I’m telling you right here, right now, that I _don’t_ care if we’re descended from some bullshit line of swordsmen. We are _not_ your soldiers. We _cannot_ fight. We’re children, and we’re useless. So _get out._ ”

The door slams in his face again.

Oikawa’s not sure of what just transpired—but he knows what he heard. These children, apparently, have been scouted by an Ubuyashiki, that one’s for sure. A particularly interesting bit would be the fact that they were descents—from a distinct line of swordsmen, notably, as the Demon Slayer Corps would not give them a backward glance if not.

He thinks of how absurd it was. That these children he stumbled upon still has ties to his past, to things he has long left behind.

Oikawa grips the pouch of money he has hidden in his robes.

He could walk away now, and avoid getting caught up with anything the Corps has touched, has an eye on.

He could walk away now. (Walk away from these angry, angry children. One step away from holding their own swords themselves. Because what Ubuyashiki wants, Ubuyashiki gets. And clearly, he has a use for these kids.)

Oikawa grips the pouch in his robes again.

He knocks.

He smiles when the door opens, as genuinely as he can.

(Maybe this time he could give something, even if he’s hollowed out.)

* * *

It’s summer. The twins, Muichirou and Yuichirou now, he learns even though he only knew it by the younger’s admittance and without much of a consent from his twin—accept his occasional visits.

According to Muichirou, the woman from last spring still comes by. She gives the usual offer, the usual tirade, then leaves, appearing as unemotional as ever. The younger twin said that her name was Amane, and that he found her beautiful, pretty, even, and Muichirou thought that she was the spirit of a white birch the first time he saw her. Oikawa just raised a brow and told Muichirou he was too much of a poet. (Oikawa, himself, has always thought the Ubuyashiki family eerie. Spirits; sure, that he could agree with, with the way they seem to just float on the surface of the earth. They’ve never seemed grounded. Their eyes always fluttered in a movement that says they knew _too much_. Oikawa did not like it. Consequently, he did not like them.)

He asked them not to mention his existence to this Ubuyashiki, of course, and he’s started to focus on his surroundings more and more now, as he visited. You never know who they had planted on the trees, stuck in the shadows.

Yuichirou gave him a skeptical look, then, when he asked them that. Thought he was suspicious. He just smiled and said, “I’m just a man who wants logs and pays you for them, of course, nothing more,” and it definitely did not make him look less sketchy.

Muichirou was way more talkative than his brother, and often conversed with Oikawa. They’ve talked about lots of things—about where Oikawa goes; (“Travelling.”) what he does; (“Labor jobs, as the economy demands.”) why he visits; (“Logs, Mui-kun, of course.”) why he has a sword; (“It makes me look cool.”)

The older twin just watches, and quips a sarcastic comment here and there, not masking the fact that he doubts any semblance of truth comes out of Oikawa’s mouth, but sweet Muichirou, of course, believes him.

He holds it over Yuichirou’s head a lot.

(Oikawa still questions himself, every time he pays them a visit. He looks down at his hands, stares at the wind and calls. They also give him no answer.

Kuroo gives him an answer, one night, when he called for him for their usual appointment. Before his hands cut Oikawa’s head off clean, he whispered: “Maybe you’ve been lonely for too long.”

And Oikawa remembers thinking with a hiss, _what does that wretched demon know_. He was _not_ lonely. He was not seeking for company. He was alright. He’s been on his own for _centuries_.

He denies Kuroo’s words vehemently, curses it along with the wind and mother mercy.

The lies dry up in his mouth as always.)

It’s still summer. The days are hot and even the nights are humid, but the heat was bearable when the sun has gone down, so he visits the twins by nightfall more and more.

This time, he comes later than usual, rubbing a sore spot in his stomach as Kuroo just took his time spilling his guts out before he came here to drop by, though he has a feeling the twins are already asleep. The cicadas cry loudly just as he steps into the forest, and Oikawa purses his mouth into a thin line with the sound.

A second step in, the air feels different—corrupt and murky and the wind shivers while it passes his skin. Oikawa stills and his hand drops automatically to the hilt of his sword.

_A demon. The twins._

Panic settles hot into his veins and he lowers into a crouch. He breathes with the wind, calls for mother mercy, then hopes, _desperately_ , that he isn’t too late.

And with a shift in the air, Oikawa blurs.

**Author's Note:**

> and there u go !! i have no idea how things worked out, so how's it so far? lmk what yall think <3 dhjhfsj


End file.
